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Cisco Survey Touts Mobile Video Boom

BETHESDA, MD.--Cisco System’s annual
Visual Networking
Index
anticipates an array of
opportunities for mobile
and wireless delivery,
including vast
expansion of mobile
video services and multiscreen
ventures. It also serves as strong
ammunition for forces who want to seize
spectrum for the growing global demand
for mobile bandwidth.

The VNI Global Mobile Data Traffic Forecast,
issued just before last month’s Mobile
World Congress in Barcelona, envisions
that video will constitute two-thirds of the
world’s mobile data traffic by 2017, a 16-
fold increase between now and then. The
mobile video load will far exceed other
mobile data usage, such as email, Web surfing
and machine-to-machine services in
the “Internet of Everything.”

Mobile video traffic accounted for 51
percent of the worlds’ Internet traffic at
the end of 2012, the first time video took
up more than half of all wireless bandwidth,
Cisco says.

Several recent analyses and product
announcements at the Barcelona mobile
trade show underscore Cisco’s great expectations.
For example, Parks Associates, a
Texas market research firm, singles out the
rapid increase of video viewing on tablets
and smartphones, and Ericsson was among
the technology suppliers to launch new
multiplatform capabilities during the Mobile
World Congress.

INDUSTRY BENCHMARK
The annual Cisco outlook, which is intended
to gauge Internet traffic to identify
where and when network hardware will
be needed, has become an industry benchmark.
In the last few years it has increasingly
focused on wireless appetites. About
four years ago, the Cisco VNI forecast for
wired networks began to cite the dominance
of video via Internet Protocol as
the dominant factor in overall bandwidth
consumption—and the need to expand
network capacity to handle it.

In its latest outlook, Cisco focuses on
the growing roles of smartphones and tablets,
predicting that more viewers around
the world will have access to two-screen
TV services if they want to use them. And
Cisco singles out a finding from its most recent
“Data Meter” tally during the last four
months of 2012 in which the greatest use
of tablets and smartphones was for watching
video.

Among the many interpretations of this
data is that simultaneous two-screen video
experiences may become less relevant if
substantial viewing is already taking place
on a handheld device.

That prospect bubbles up in Parks Associates
report on “Mobile Video: The Next
Pay Tv Battlefront.” The study looks at the
growing competition from over-the-top
video services as well as shifting viewing
preferences as consumers can watch video
on multiple screen options.

“Smartphones and tablets will be key
battlegrounds in the fight between traditional
pay TV providers and over-the-top
providers,” says John Barrett, director of
consumer analytics at Parks. The study
confirms Cisco’s tally about the increasing
video consumption on tablets, smartphones
and computers (desktop and especially
laptops) during the past two years.
Significantly, the analysis shows that in
houses equipped with broadband, “occasional
viewers” (people who tune in fewer
than 15 times per month), are watching
less on conventional TV sets but spending
significantly more viewing time on tablets,
handsets and computers. The Parks study
also reflects data from Nielsen and others,
that TV set viewing is climbing slightly, but
not at the velocity of alternatives.

“Netflix currently dominates three of
the four screens consumers use to watch
movies and TV programs,” adds Barrett. “It
is crucial for pay TV providers to establish
a strong mobile video presence as part of
their overall strategy to counter OTT.”

ENABLING THE MULTISCREEN
MIGRATION
As options expand, infrastructure providers
are preparing for the IP video future that
Cisco’s forecasts portend. For example, at
the Mobile World Conference, Ericsson unveiled
its unified content delivery network
(CDN), which it says can “unite the delivery
of managed and unmanaged video content
over fixed and mobile networks.”

Ericsson’s platform recognizes that the
movement toward on-demand and other
OTT content require high-quality video and
the optimization of what Ericsson calls “traffic
over multiple CDNs via a single CDN selection
technology.”

The company claims that its “Ericsson
Media Delivery Network” will serve the
needs of content providers and operators
throughout the media value chain.

“Internet traffic is growing with exponential
force and becoming dominated by
video,” says an Ericsson statement, reflecting
the Cisco and other findings. “These disruptive
trends are true game-changers for our
customers.’

The company says its Media Delivery
Network is “designed to enable operators to
[handle]the rapid growth in managed and
unmanaged content, especially the massive
growth in Over-The-Top services and applications,
which can present network operators
with several challenges.” It cites high
peering costs, expensive backhaul transit,
“last-mile” bandwidth competition and declining
subscription revenues.

Ericsson claims that its “end-to-end business
solution …enables operators to …leverage
their established consumer relationship;
while at the same time offering content
providers and enterprises cost-effective accessibility
and guaranteed quality of experience
across mobile and fixed networks.”

Reflecting the evolving multiscreen delivery
environment, the company is also emphasizing
that the “multiservice architecture
allows expansion to different CDN applications,”
including Web acceleration, gaming
and other IP utilities.

Other vendors in Barcelona were expected
to introduce similar products to feed the
needs of wired and wireless operators who
are scrambling to keep up with the multiplatform
juggernaut.

Hence Cisco’s VNI outlook becomes
a self-fulfilling prophecy as well as an important
roadmap for the future of delivery,
especially the dominant video ingredient.
For example, Cisco expects that by 2017,
mobile-connected tablets will receive and
generate more traffic than the entire global
mobile network in 2012. And for historic
comparison, Cisco notes that mobile data
traffic last year was nearly 12 times the size
of the entire global Internet in 2000.

Cisco is equally specific as it looks ahead,
stipulating that, “The amount of [global] mobile
data traffic generated by tablets in 2017
[1.3 exabytes per month] will be 1.5 times
higher than the total amount of global mobile
data traffic in 2012 [885 petabytes per
month].”

Those figures include a lot of video. In
fact, just measuring in exabytes (each equivalent
to a billion gigabytes or a million terabytes)
is a reminder of how big and how fast
this multiplatform evolution really is taking
shape.